This article examines several fatwās by the important Muslim reformer Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā. It treats these fatwās as part of a broader Arabic debate on “materialism” at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. In this context, Riḍā's fatwās on materialism illustrate the changing nature of Islamic religious authority in this period, as new kinds of knowledge became available to new kinds of readers.

This study examines the treatment of meat in Assyrian state cult of the first millennium bce. To this aim, the administrative and cultic textual evidence about offerings of whole animals, meat cuts, and meat-based culinary preparations are considered here. After an overview of the meat offerings in the ritual action of a series of Assyrian cult ceremonies, the enquiry focuses on the culinary treatment, presentation, and manipulation of the sacrificial meat; the evidence discussed reveals that the culinary treatment of the meat offered differed according to the deity and the cultic occasion.

This article fits into the general picture of investigations on meta-historical thinking in Antiquity, as well as possible links between Persian apocalyptic literature and early Christian literature. The paper also explores the long-standing debate on the influence of Zoroastrian thought on Jewish–Christian apocalyptic – or whether it was rather the other way round.

Since the sack of Somnath by Maḥmūd of Ghazna in 1025–26, Somnath has been a byword for religious orthodoxy, intolerance and conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Yet looking further than Maḥmūd's greed for the temple's gold and later the Delhi sultans' appetite for territory, Somnath and most other towns of Saurashtra had long-established settlements of Muslims engaged in international maritime trade. The settlers, while adhering to their own values, respected their hosts and their traditions and enjoyed the support of the local rajas. It is only in recent years that Hindu nationalist parties have revived the story of Maḥmūd to evoke resentment against the era of Muslim domination, with the aim of inducing communal tensions and gaining political power. The inscriptions and many mosques and Muslim shrines in this Hindu holy city and its vicinity bear witness to the long history of harmonious co-existence between Hindus and Muslims. This paper explores the Muslim culture of Somnath by studying its major mosques. Through an analytic exploration of the typology of the mosques of Saurashtra, the paper demonstrates that while the old centres of power in Gujarat lay outside Saurashtra it is in Somnath and its neighbouring towns that numerous mosques dating from prior to the sultanate of Gujarat still stand. These monuments help illuminate our understanding of early Muslim architecture in Gujarat and its aesthetic evolution from the time of the peaceful maritime settlements to the establishment of the Gujarat Sultanate.

The Golden Window above the Golden Door of Caukoṭ Darbār, a building on the western side of the (former) Royal Palace complex, is a major attraction in the city of Patan (Nepal). The gilt window panel features a representation of Avalokiteśvara in his form as Sṛṣṭikartā (“creator”) emanating Hindu divinities from his body. The sides, base and tympanum of the window likewise display Hindu divinities. The construction of the window has been ascribed to different kings of the late Malla period (1483–1768) and is said to illustrate their support for the Buddhist practices of their subjects, while providing a Hindu interpretative framework for such practices. In this paper I identify the divinities on the window and examine textual and visual sources that shed light on the date of the window's construction, including the inscriptions above and at the sides of the Golden Door. I show that there is no evidence for such an early dating of the window and that the Golden Window was probably constructed sometime in the nineteenth century in either the Śāh period (1769–1846) or, more likely, the Rāṇā period (1846–1951). I conclude with some thoughts on the possible significance of the peculiar configuration of divinities surrounding the Bodhisattva on the window.